


Stranglehold

by Slinky (Golbez)



Category: Undertale (Video Game)
Genre: But they're all dead, Dark, Gen, Mindfuck, No Mercy Route, POV Chara, POV First Person, POV Second Person, Possession, Spoilers, Wordcount: 1.000-5.000, pov switching
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-15
Updated: 2015-10-15
Packaged: 2018-04-26 11:28:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,004
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5003059
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Golbez/pseuds/Slinky
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You aren't alone on this journey. <i>I'm</i> here too. You can try to fight me and save your friends, but you'll just fail again and again.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Stranglehold

**Author's Note:**

> Yes hello I have so many fics for Undertale in the works but the idea for this one bit me and I ended up writing it in one session so here goes.

The knife isn't real, but it cuts through fur and flesh and fabric so, _so_ easily. Toriel's eyes widen as her body breaks down to its essence, as she's reduced to her SOUL that hovers and lingers in the air before you while her physical aspects turn to dust that hits the amethyst floor and _scatters_. You watch as the SOUL breaks in turn, shattering into invisible pieces. The scent of butterscotch tickles your nose as you stride forward, your steps kicking up the dust ~~that was once your mother~~. The fabric wrapping the pie slice in your inventory must have teared.

There is something familiar about this.

You shrug off the thought and continue through the door.

Why, if it isn't my best friend.

***

You take a moment after nearly slipping on ice to suck on candy coated in one of the pieces of snow you took earlier amidst pleading and screams. You think back on your encounters with the skeletons as you trudge onward over the powdery snow. You are unconcerned with the tall one, but the comedian...there is something about him that unsettles even you. 

You lick the remains of the sticky candy off your fingers as you approach a plain of only snow, some of the powder on your hand coming off. It tastes as bland as you might expect.

Snowdin is quiet behind you, all the windows dark and the lifelessness not of your doing, save for a monster child too stupid to flee. You face Papyrus down and step forward even as he speaks and it isn't that long before he's nothing but dust on the ground, mixed with the snow as if he had never existed.

For a moment you consider going back to the brightly decorated house you had just passed a moment ago, at the edge of Snowdin. You have no reason to do that.

A crack suddenly rings out from somewhere behind you. I turn and spot a flash of light, of something blue, something whiter than the snow, then it's gone.

I think I know whom it was. I'll deal with him later.

You carry on past where the snow ends, and start leaving white footprints on soft, damp soil.

***

Your shirt sticks to your skin, the blue and pink barely visible under a fine layer of white that seems to be mostly everywhere on you. No amount of rubbing manages to get any of it off, and if anything, the moist air of Waterfall only makes it worse, to say nothing of the way the water you waded through only seemed to make your clothes heavier and no cleaner. 

You are halfway across the bridge, thinking about how you'll have to find some lighter clothing, when the wind picks up and you hear someone call to you.

Wind rushes through the cavern when Undyne faces you, filled with a determination that I know simply cannot match my own. No matter how many spears she throws, no monster is a match for me -

***

_I'm ready for her this time -_

***

She melts before becoming dust, her smile the last of her to dissolve. Good riddance, it was becoming frustrating to come here again and again, fun as it is to see that stupid child's expression of terror directed towards me. With Undyne, the last bit of resistance any monster can muster against me dies. Determination simply isn't for monsters, but you think you know why she had it. You don't know why you do, but you think Alphys had something to do it. ~~Wait, who's Alphys again?~~

You kick at Undyne's dust, your shoes no more whiter for it. The wind picks it ups and scatters it. How fitting, that's the monster funeral rite, if I remember correctly. Scatter their dust to the things they love. Well this world is what she loved, and what she stupidly gave herself up for.

You sneeze. The wind howls and your shirt sticks to your skin. You wipe your nose and continue on, past the cragged rock and the unmoving sign. You stick your hands in your pockets as you pass it, shivering a little from the cold, rubbing the hard surface of your cellphone. ~~Nobody calls, even if you expect it for some reason.~~

The pressuring humidity of Waterfall soon gives way to dry, warm air.

***

I despise air vents and spiders and robots. 

***

I pause at the door. 

You've seen this same building facade before, not too long ago, in a place that could have been a home better than the one you had on the surface. A safe place, a home where no one could hurt you. Where you could spend forever. That's the lie she told all the children when they came down here, the same lie she told you.

But you knew better, right?

That's why you killed her, because you needed to get out. You wanted to go home, to your real home up on the surface. But here we are. _I'm_ home.

You're curious, aren't you? You look through the rooms and try to ignore Flowey's ridiculous words. I'm paying attention though, because he's got a funny story for me. I know him. He's just a big crybaby who likes to talk big. I'll kill him later.

The sight of the bedroom gives you pause, before I stride over to the drawers, pulling out the lowest one, the one where I know my things should still be. My steps leave footprints on the floor, coated in a fine layer of dust that's nothing like monster dust. This room hasn't been touched since I left it as a corpse years ago.

It's just as I thought. Asgore was too weak to come in here and look through my things. The bottom drawer is filled with wilted flowers, dead from the years of quarantine. The memory of their taste comes back to me as I reach into the drawer and shove all the flowers aside.

There it is, hidden in the deepest recesses of the drawer. My fingers slip around the handle and grasp it firmly, pulling it to me so I could unsheathe it. The weight is comforting, the shape of the blade a familiar, calming sight. It glints as I examine it, as if telling me: _welcome home, old friend, it was about time._

I'm smiling as I step back out into the hallway. It's easy enough to take a quick detour to the mirror at the end, near Asgore's room. I have to practice smiling - I'm about to meet the King, after all.

I think you would have been horrified to see what's become of your face. The white dust is truly everywhere now, like a second skin that cannot be shed, a skin made of dead monsters that had cried for mercy but were never worthy of it. I'm sure you'd be trying to rub it off right now, until your skin turns raw and red from the scrubbing, but not even that would be enough to remove the sins you've allowed to happen. You bathed in the dust of monsters from the Ruins to the Core, and nothing you might want to do now would change that. But that doesn't matter, because I think it looks fine, and you're really just me now anyway.

The locket over my heart glints in the dim light. Right where it belongs. 

Let's get moving.

***

I knew that skeleton was hiding something. He had known all along, hadn't he, about the SAVEing and the LOADing? Now why hadn't he done something earlier? 

Ah, yes, that's right. I eliminated his brother and...there must be something. Some other reason than just that for him to have avoided me all this time.

He gives me the time of my life at first. A thrilling battle that ends far too quickly. I fight him again. And again. His taunts get more and more infuriating until in the end I am simply waiting for the chance to end him.

Then he calls out to you. Seeking you out from within me, as if you still existed in some form still. _Buddy_ , he calls you, calls me, as if you can hear him. I laugh and attack him, he dodges it. You are dead, and there's only me now.

_No, stop..._

I hear you, loud and clear, as weak as you sound. Your determination keeps you intact inside your own head. What a pitiful existence it must be for you.

_Stop killing my friends!_

But my determination is stronger. I make short work of Sans not long after. His dust scatters on the honey colored floor, mixed with ketchup that smears when I kick at it. The red sticks to my shoes, a nice contrast to the white.

I can hear you crying. I LOAD.

***

Sans picks up on the grin I'm wearing as I approach him again. I can predict everything he does this time, every bone and laser he throws at me. It's easy to get back to where we are, to his so called special attack. You're pleading with me as the knife opens a gash in him for the second time, as ketchup bursts from the slash and stains my knife once more.

You are sobbing on the third time, begging me not to do it again, to just get this over with. To carry on to Asgore once I'm through with Sans this time. 

You are screaming and yelling on the fourth, cursing me and hating me, but in the end you are hating yourself for the sins you committed yourself, the sins that summoned me to your mind.

You are silent on the fifth. I destroy Sans effortlessly. You ask me, quietly, if you had ever even been in control of your body, if I had only appeared after you killed some of your friends.

I laugh as I stomp on the puddle of ketchup and splatter red and dust everywhere. No, I answer, it was never you. I was already here. You were just a puppet who fell here by chance, the perfect vessel for a dead child to take over.

You are silent once more as I storm into Asgore's throne room.

~~Hello, father.~~

***

The knife cuts through fur and flesh and armor so beautifully. Asgore's eyes widen, but his body lingers just long enough for me to sneer and take out the pie in my inventory. He recognizes it, of course. It symbolizes what he's wanted all this time, more so than the SOUL pulsing within me, more so than storming the surface in revenge. His eyes widen even further as I eat the cold slice before him, as he realizes what I've done, why I have it. I take in the despair in his eyes, the fear, the hate. 

I ready my knife for another hit. He is the last one in my way.

Bullets form a circle around him and destroy his body before I can. His SOUL hovers and lingers, and before I can reach out and grab him, another circle of bullets close in on him and reduce him to dust. He scatters on the buttercups carpeting the floor, just as one of the flowers shifts and moves and turns to face me.

I gaze at him as he tries to explain himself, tries to appeal to me. Well, I always did wonder what would happen to something neither monster nor human upon death.

The knife tears through him. Again. Again. Again. Soon, there is nothing of him left, not even dust like his mother and father left, like the monsters I cut through. Flowey does not even bleed on my knife, no red to stain its steel. Soon, there's nothing left ~~of my brother~~. I step back and take a moment to inhale.

Then I continue through the door, white footprints like snow on harsh gray rock.

To the next world it is.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
You want to SAVE your friends this time?


End file.
